Rogue-like

So, yeah, here at PTT! we tend to be game design snobs and think about games from a design rather than implementation perspective (I spit on your novel and original visual effects! pfaugh! brainless eye-candy!). Yet occasionally, you run into something and say: Sweet! What a cool technical hack.

Asciiroth is, you know, a conventional Rogue-like, and while not a bad one, not the best either. BUT... It's developed using the Google Web Toolkit, which basically allows you to write in Java and compile it to Javascript, so it'll run in the browser without requiring the user to install desktop Java -- and then uses Adobe Air, which can take an AJAX application and turn it into a downloadable desktop app.

Legerdemain is clearly a rogue-like game; you play a single character ina fantasy world represented by ASCII graphics, with a variety of character classes and a levelling-up system. Yet in many ways, it defeats the expected tropes of the genre.

Fatherhood is a Rogue-like, at least to the degree of being a turn-based ASCII game, with a command-set that will be familiar to players of this type of game. However, it's certainly not a dungeon-crawler -- indeed, there's no combat whatsoever.

The basic set-up is this: on a randomly generated map (some pre-generated maps are also included), some number of rivers are about to flood their banks, and some number of forest fires are burning. You're a Dad, and your three kids are running about the game as well -- they start near you, but have a tendency to wander off. You can halt fires and floods by picking up boulders and moving them to choke points -- and you win by making sure that neither you nor any of your kids drowns or is burned to death.

Almost 30 years ago, I was bored one evening and decided that what I really wanted was a D&D-like game I could play by myself. So I slapped together a little boardgame called DeathMaze that SPI published a year or two later. Since then, there have been probably hundreds of similar games published -- indeed, even from the inception of digital games, with titles like Wizardry. At present, my favorite game of the genre is FastCrawl, which is a nicely polished version; but "free" is a nice price to pay, and Monster's Den isn't bad either.

Meritous takes the essential gameplay loop of a Rogue-like, strips it down to a simple interface and a three-pronged progression scheme, and dolls it up with mono-spectrum shaded pixel art. Its wonderful, a three note ascending scale that, if you're open to it, will play a never ending fugue with your dopamine receptors.

Transcendence's developer, George Moromisato, says his game is inspired by Elite, Star Control II and NetHack -- at first glance, a rather odd combination. After all, the first two are open-ended space games, and the third a Rogue-like; yet on second thought, both game styles share certain characteristics. Both create algorithmically generated universes -- that is, instead of having preplanned levels, both generate the challenges faced by the player at runtime, in a semi-random fashion. Both give the player control of a single game token: in the case of Rogue-likes, a character, and in the case of Elite-style games, a starship. And both measure progress by the increasing capabilities of your game token--in terms of levels for Rogue-likes, and in terms of ship improvements (and newer and more powerful ships) in Elite-style games.

Kamyran's Eye 2 is a Rogue-like game--that is, a computer RPG in which you control a single character in a fantasy world, and in which the world is at least partially randomly generated, so that no two games are like. It's a sequel to the original (now freeware) Kamyran's Eye, which was designed for Nokia Series 60 phones (and if you have an old N-Gage, might be worth downloading to play on it).

Unlike most Rogue-likes, Kamyran's Eye 2 has a graphical interface -- attractive, if retro, 32x32 pixel tiles -- and some nice features, including a system to allow you to make your own magic potions from items you find in the game world.

Only two games have been on the hard drive of every computer I have owned since I first encountered them: Civilization, and NetHack.

Technically, NetHack is a "Rogue-like game," Rogue being the first game of this type, originally implemented for academic minicomputers before there was such a thing as a home computer. Rogue-likes are D&D-ish dungeon crawls, with randomly generated dungeon levels, and wide variety in terms of monsters, weapons, armor, spells, and magic items. Rogue wasn't a bad game--but there's nothing like NetHack.